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While cracking is a complex dynamics that involves material intrinsic properties like grain shape and size distribution, elastic properties of grain and cementing materials, and extrinsic properties of loading, in this work, the focus has…
Polymer gels behave as soft viscoelastic solids and exhibit a generic nonlinear mechanical response characterized by pronounced stiffening prior to irreversible failure, most often through macroscopic fractures. Here, we aim at capturing…
For nearly a century, introduction of nanoparticles to elastomers has yielded extraordinarily tough nanocomposites that are critical to technologies from actuators to tires. The mechanisms by which this reinforcement occurs have…
The paper proposes a new fragmentation mechanism of dendrite arms. The theoretical basis of this mechanism is a shift in the thermodynamical equilibrium at the solid-liquid interface due to the presence of elastic energy. This effect is…
The fracture and severing of polymer chains plays a critical role in the failure of fibrous materials and the regulated turnover of intracellular filaments. Using continuum wormlike chain models, we investigate the fracture of semiflexible…
For solving the longstanding materials science problem of correlating elastic properties of a solid material to the formation of cracks we present a new general concept. This concept is applied to the technologically most important cracks…
Drawing on an analogy to critical phenomena, it was shown that the Nikuradse turbulent friction factor ($f_t$) measurements in pipes of radius $R$ and wall roughness $r$ can be collapsed onto a one-dimensional curve expressed as a…
It is shown here that fracture after a brief plastic strain, typically of a few percents, is a necessary consequence of the polycrystalline nature of the materials. The polycrystal undergoing plastic deformation is modeled as a flowing…
It is widely known that hydrogels, a class of soft materials made of a polymer chain network, are prone to fatigue failure. To understand the underlying mechanism, here we simulate polymer scission and fatigue initiation in the vicinity of…
The transformation stretch tensor plays an essential role in the evaluation of conditions of compatibility between phases and the use of the Cauchy-Born rule. This tensor is difficult to measure directly from experiment. We give an…
The classical problem of foam film rupture dynamics has been investigated when surfaces exhibit very high rigidity due to the presence of specific surfactants. Two new features are reported. First a strong deviation to the well-known…
The phase field paradigm, in combination with a suitable variational structure, has opened a path for using Griffith's energy balance to predict the fracture of solids. These so-called phase field fracture methods have gained significant…
Fracture of materials with rate-dependent mechanical behaviour, e.g. polymers, is a highly complex process. For an adequate modelling, the coupling between rate-dependent stiffness, dissipative mechanisms present in the bulk material and…
The development of rate- and state-dependent friction laws offered important insights into the key physical mechanisms of the frictional behaviour of fault gouges and their seismic cycle. However, past approaches were specifically tailored…
We investigate the elastic buckling of a triangular prism made of a soft elastomer. A face of the prism is bonded to a stiff slab that imposes an average axial compression. We observe two possible buckling modes which are localized along…
Viscoelasticity is well known to cause significant hysteresis of crack closure and opening when an elastomer is brought in and out of contact with a flat, rigid, adhesive counterface. A separate origin of adhesive hysteresis is small-scale,…
The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap between the classical treatment of brittle fracture mechanics and the new idea of considering the crack evolution as a free discontinuity problem. Griffith and Irwin criterions of crack…
Reproducing the key features of fracture behavior under multiaxial stress states is essential for accurate modeling. Experimental evidence indicates that three intrinsic material properties govern fracture nucleation in elastic materials:…
In order to design tougher materials, it is crucial to understand the relationship between their composition and their resistance to fracture. To this end, we investigate the fracture toughness of usual sodium silicate glasses (NS) and…
We investigate the statistical mechanics of a torsionally constrained polymer. The polymer is modeled as a fluctuating rod with bend stiffness A kT and twist stiffness C kT. In such a model, thermal bend fluctuations couple geometrically to…